The former director of the state ethics commission testified Thursday that she would take her old job “in a heartbeat.”
“Even after everything,” Stacey Kalberman testified on the fourth day of the trial in her lawsuit against her former employer.
Kalberman claims she was forced out of the job for aggressively investigating Gov. Nathan Deal’s 2010 campaign and that Holly Laberge was handpicked by Deal’s staff to replace her.
With testimony over, Fulton County Superior Court Judge Ural Glanville released the jurors and ordered them to return to court Friday morning to begin deliberations. Kalberman, now working for a technology insurance company in Nashville, Tenn., has asked for reinstatement with back pay or three years of back pay, damages and attorneys’ fees.
As the final witness in the case, Kalberman told jurors that she loved her job and had a good relationship with commissioners — until May 3, 2011, when she and her top deputy presented the commission with draft subpoenas for records related to the Deal case.
Then, she said, everything changed.
On June 9, she was told the agency faced a budget crisis that required her salary to be cut $35,000, or 30 percent, and that her deputy, Sherilyn Streicker, be laid off.
Kalberman testified that Patrick Millsaps, the chairman of the commission at the time, had never before been interested in the agency’s budget.
“I said I believe this has nothing to do with the budget,” Kalberman said she told another commissioner at the time. Millsaps “is after something else,” she said.
Kalberman and Streicker say the claims of a budget crisis was only cover to derail the Deal investigation. Lawyers from the commission, however, said Kalberman knew all along that the agency faced a financial shortfall.
Still, Kalberman’s argument was bolstered Thursday by testimony from the commission’s former staff attorney, Elisabeth Murray-Obertein.
Laberge hired Murray-Obertein to be staff attorney after Kalberman and Streicker, her top deputy, were forced from office. Murray-Obertein testified that Laberge told her that commissioners “felt Stacey and Sherry were delving into the (Deal) investigation too deeply.”
Asked whether Laberge ever considered rehiring Streicker, Murray-Obertein said Laberge adamantly opposed it.
“She told me that she would quit before she would hire Sherry Streicker back because she did not want to work with someone who was investigating the governor in the manner she was, because she knew it displeased the commissioners,” Murray-Obertein said.
The subpoenas for records were never issued, and in 2012 the major charges against the governor’s campaign were dropped. He agreed to pay $3,350 in fees for technical defects in his campaign filings.
Murray-Obertein also testified that she and Laberge discussed pay raises for themselves as both were hired at lower salaries than Kalbmerman and Streicker. Ultimately, she said, Laberge claimed to have spoken to Deal directly to land a raise for herself.
Deal spokesman Brian Robinson disputed that. Robinson told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, “the governor has said numerous times that he has never met with Holly LaBerge, nor has she ever discussed her salary with anyone in the governor’s office.”
Laberge declined to comment on Murray-Obertein’s claim.
Murray-Obertein was fired from the commission in January after a Capitol police officer said he smelled alcohol on her on the morning of a workday. The circumstances of her leaving the commission were not brought up in court, as both sides agreed not to mention it.
Earlier Thursday, Streicker testified there were no hints her job was in danger until after she drafted subpoenas for records in the Deal campaign investigation. The subpoenas are key to the case, as Kalberman and Streicker were both out of a job barely a month after presenting draft subpoenas to the commission for approval.
Streicker testified she never believed the commission would aggressively pursue charges against Deal.
“I knew the commissioners weren’t going to move forward with this, just seeing the way they handled the previous cases dealt with,” Streicker testified under cross-examination by Assistant Attorney General Laura McDonald.
Streicker testified that concerns about the commission’s budget were discussed internally as early as February 2011. On May 3, Streicker and Kalberman presented the draft subpoenas to the commission. Within weeks, the commission determined the agency’s budget problems were so dire it had to cut Kalberman’s salary and eliminate Streicker’s job.
“They decided to fire me and cut her salary,” Streicker said. “It was pretty awesome.”
Streicker has also filed a whistleblower lawsuit against the commission, as has John Hair, a former media specialist at the agency who also testified Thursday. Hair said Laberge often asked him to alter or remove files from commission computer servers and put them on a removable hard drive that he would hand-deliver to Laberge.
That only happened, Hair said, with files related to Deal.
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